CSA members on the wild food walk around the Oak Tree
We had a great day today wandering around the hedgerow perimeter of The Oak Tree, gathering wild food and then preparing lunch from our haul! Here’s Dan Wheals, our medical herbalist CSA member describing the benefits of the many useful hedgerow plants.
This is the traditional “hungry gap” (April/May) in the vegetable garden, but, as if by magic, the hedgerows are full of fantastic edible greens at this time of year.
Everybody gathered around the proposed menu before we set off
Gemma triumphantly bringing out some hedge garlic from the hedge
There are lots of wild leaves perfect for a spring salads – a favourite is hedge garlic.
Some of the fruits of our labour
A bowl full of exquisite nettle tips for the soup
Nettle soup proved popular at lunchtime, made very simply with onions, sea salt, pepper, oats and potatoes, flavoured with a bay leaf or two and liquidised well. This was a traditional spring dish said to “clean the blood” – certainly nettles are very rich in minerals. If you pick just the tips, say the first two or three pair of leaves, without gloves, it is easy to gather a reasonable quantity quite quickly and it is far less painful than you imagine. Go on, try grapsing the nettle!
Elderflowers
Elderflower fritters were a universal success. Dipped in a thick batter (made with eggs from the farm, of course!), deep fried and then sprinkled with a little icing sugar, they disappeared almost as soon as they emerged from the pan!
Wild food Salad
Ok, so the wild food salad included a few less seasonal ingredients, but it did contain many different wild greens: dandelion leaves, hawthorn leaves, hedge garlic, dead nettle tips and the tips of cleavers.
Everybody tucks in
The Alexanders were only a limited success, they were somewhat stringy. They were proably a little too old as they were starting to go to seed, I have enjoyed them on previous occasions. Jon and Gemma found some use for them – the stalks are hollow so they improvised a percussion set with them. You can hear this on the audio player below -pretty good I think you’d agree. Jon is a professional percussionist – a man who can make music from tough Alexander stalks really is blessed with an extraordinary talent!
Elderflower Champagne recipe:
Warning: Use plastic (reuse is better than recycling so don’t feel bad about the plastic) fizzy drinks bottles (they’re made stronger than others) to avoid explosions – though even these have been known to explode. I guess ideally use glass champagne bottles, insert a cork and secure with wire but I for one can’t be bothered with such things.
1) dissolve 1 1/2 lbs sugar in 2 pints hot water
2) add juice of large lemon & rest of lemon cut up roughly
3) add 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
4) add (far more than) 12 heads elderflowers (maybe I’d use twice 12)
5) add 6 pts cold water
6) leave to stand 4 days (3 may suffice) then carefully remove the no-doubt-mouldy-by-now elderflowers with a seive & strain (ideally through muslin) then decant into fizzy drink bottles.
7) leave 2 wks. then move out of your house taking with you anything precious or breakable